Email Thursday – Enough is Enough

Today’s topic is Enough Is Enough – three practical tips on how to streamline your email marketing costs.

Regardless of the size of your subscriber list, your email program is a significant investment in time, labor, and financial resources.

Is there a way that you can cut costs while continuously improving the response rate? How do you know which corners you can cut, and which corners are absolutely essential to the sustained success of your program?

In the subsequent slides, I will introduce three concepts that you can immediately apply – and reap the results in a relatively short period of time.

The first tip is to know your fans. Behaviors reveal a lot about a person – including a person’s interest in your email marketing.

If a person has not responded to your email program in six months, you should remove them from the “active subscriber list.

Why should you expend time and energy on people who have a history of ignoring your email messages? Why not focus on individuals who respond positively to your email?

Your email service provider should be able to generate a list of individuals who have, or have not, opened an email within a given period of time.

When you are sending out email marketing to individuals who are not responding, you run the risk of accumulating spam complaints.

Just as importantly, you are spending money on people who have exhibited a miniscule possibility of responding to your email in a positive manner.

Just as importantly, I am not advocating that you banish the non-responders from your list entirely.
Perhaps you can broadcast an email to the entire subscriber list once per quarter with an extra-ordinary offer. Alternatively, you can also choose to speak to the entire list during peak sales seasons, such as the holidays.

But trimming the fat by only communicating to your fans, you will instantly accumulate a cost savings.

Every email marketer wants to know: how many email blasts should I send out in a month? Four? One? Ten?

As with other great questions, there is no universal answer that applies to every marketing program in the world.

But knowing how many email blasts you should broadcast within a given period of time is critical to controlling the costs of your email program.

How does one arrive at the magic number?

The simplest answer is: look at your data! If you are tracking the metrics of your email program, then you already have a benchmark of data.
If you are not tracking the metrics, today is the perfect day to start.

But look at your data. Are you currently sending out emails once per week?
Experiment by sending out an email on a bi-weekly basis!

Does a bi-weekly blast result in a higher or lower response rate – be it open, conversion or click-through rate?

Such analysis over a longer period of time will help you triangulate on the number of email communications you should be sending to your list.

By undertaking this exercise, you could potentially cut your email costs by sending less frequently but reaping similar (or better) results.
Imagine if you could increase your revenue generation by 10% while sending out 30% less emails! This is entirely possible!With many technological solutions, people feel married to them. Perhaps it’s out of a loyalty or preference. More often than naught, the marriage is based on perceived lock-in – the inability to survive on an alternate solution.

Email service providers know this. Email software developers know this. And they use it to their advantage to maximize revenue – from you!

One way to avoid being taken hostage by your email service provider is to know your options. The key to any successful negotiation is to know when to stay, and know when to walk away.

When you feel like your costs are ballooning out of control, have a rolodex of email service providers ready.

This approach requires an exploration of which email service providers realistically fit your needs. This is where networking comes into play.

Be sure to network at conferences, professional events, and trade shows. Schedule demos and learn as much as you can from websites and online forums.

The only way to know if you are overpaying for an underwhelming email solution is to know what else is available out there.

Even the basic knowledge that there are viable alternatives will serve you well.

As they say, knowledge is power. In this case, it’s the power to save time and money for you and your organization.